


picking up all the pieces

by orphan_account



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, F/F, Fem!Tony Stark - Freeform, Femslash, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, fem!steve rogers - Freeform, there might be more steve in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 04:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14253327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: She takes the stones the press throw at her and does the only thing she knows: she turns it into a weapon.





	picking up all the pieces

Howard always wanted a son.

 

When Tony is fourteen, she cuts her hair. It’s mostly meant as a pot-shot at Howard, but after the fact, as she examines herself in her bathroom mirror, locks of dark brown lying at her feet, she decides she maybe likes it. Yeah it’s, it’s messy, but the way it curls over her ears appeals to her in a way she doesn’t really understand.

Tony has a poster of Captain America across from her bed. It’s not very suggestive, really, but Her skirt is just a little too short to be military sanctioned, and she’s leaning forward in salute, at the perfect angle to accentuate her hips and breasts. And her muscles. Sometimes Tony dreams about her, dreams that she never really remembers once she wakes up, but leave her heart racing.

 

_It’s Tony - no not with an ‘i’ with a ‘y’ - no, it’s not a boy’s name_ \- almost becomes her personal mantra. MIT is a big place, and it’s not designed for lanky girls with short hair and strange names but Tony’s never really cared about things like that. And anyway, people care less about those things after they find out your last name is Stark. Funny how five letters can mean everything.

Tony knows she’s a genius, and she doesn’t hide it. She doesn’t hide it in her classes or when she corrects her professor or when she tries to help to other students. Tony knows she’s a genius, and she tries to hide it. She’s talking to a guy she barely knows, or really he’s talking to her, explaining about canard configurations and aeronautics, and she already knows it, but she also knows that she doesn’t have any friends here, and maybe just once she should try to fit in. But then he says something Tony just knows is wrong and she can’t seem to stop herself from blurting that you need to _decrease the aspect ratio, actually,_ and she wants to bang her head into a wall, but the guy laughs and claps her on the back in a way that makes her almost stumble because, well, _what?_

And then he’s introducing himself properly, and his name is James Rhodes, and Tony’s voice nearly breaks on her own name as she hurries to return the favor but the guy just smiles and says ‘I know,” and from then on, well.

 

At some point between James and Rhodey, Tony tries to kiss him. James just gives her a tight smile and shakes his head. Tony flushes and not for the first time feels an out-of-body sensation, looking down at herself, at her flat boobs and wiry arms and well, she isn’t surprised. Is all. But the next day Rhodey drops by her big empty flat with an espresso and an open smile and maybe it isn’t so bad.

A few months later, when Rhodey is asleep sitting up on the divan in her lounge and Tony’s lying with her head against his shoulder, she decides she never really wanted him anyway. Or rather, the only Rhodey she wants is this one, and maybe that’s alright.

Tony knows that people think they are fucking. Rhodey rants about it once, half an apologetic explanation, half embittered raving, about how _you’re only fifteen, Jesus Christ,_ and Tony wants to reply, to get roused into passion, any kind, maybe  _fuck you Rhodes, I know how to give consent_ or, _yeah, I get it, they’re all assholes anyway, who even says that we can’t just be friends?_ But she only hums in agreement and stares at her hands.

 

* * *

 

One month and twelve days after she gets her first PhD her parents die.

She goes to funeral, and is silent throughout it. As soon as it’s over she leaves as silently as she came.

She stays at the Stark mansion for a week. Jarvis stays out of the way as Tony makes it through the liquor cabinet. She sleeps in the master bedroom the first night. The other six she spends in her childhood bedroom. In a sudden fit on the fifth day she tears down her Captain America poster. Funny how the only woman Howard was ever proud of died before Tony was born.

 

At some point between being an awkward teen and a CEO Tony loses her virginity. The man is objectively attractive, and drunk. So is she. Drunk that is. Most days she feels a far stretch away from attractive. After it’s over, she rolls onto her side and pretends to sleep. She feels an emptiness in her chest that wasn’t there before.

She doesn’t try it again.

 

Tony hasn’t worn a dress since her 5th grade piano recital. And she isn’t trying to prove a point, really, they just don’t feel right on her. Maybe she would rather a Ralph Lauren over Chanel. Maybe it doesn’t have to matter. Except for when it does.

The first fundraiser event she goes to as head of Stark Industries, she tries her best. She remembers the rules: Only one glass. Shake hands. No ditching. And she follows them to the letter, but she knows, deep down, that it doesn’t work. No matter what kind of smile she wears or what dress they shove her into, in the end she’s betrayed by her rough hands and the way she can’t grasp her champagne flute as delicately as the other woman do. But she does it anyway. And if as soon as she’s home she pours a glass of Jack and disappears into her lab until the sun rises, no one but her would know.

 

The first time Tony fucks a woman, she feels like she’s floating.

The first time Tony wakes up in a woman’s bed, she throws up in their bathroom.

She never claimed to have her life sorted out. But maybe one part of it is.

 

The third woman Tony fucks is her P.A., a long-legged blonde that towers over Tony, even without heels. It turns into a, a fling. Not a relationship, never a relationship. Relationships are for other people. Eventually Tony gets bored. They break it off. Two months later it’s a headline.

 

(The second time Tony fucks a woman her name is Sunset Bain and Tony thinks fucking maybe isn’t the right word for it. Not that it’s, it’s making love or something like that. Maybe it’s sex. Sex with Sunset is slow, and they kiss deep and Tony leaves marks against her collarbone like rose petals. Sunset’s laugh is sweet and Tony’s  gets high on it; they go to parties just to make fun of everyone there, and then make out in the bathroom. Sunset doesn’t mind that Tony sometimes spends hours in her lab, or that sometimes she’s drunk before lunch. And sometimes at night they don’t have sex, and Tony runs her fingers through Sunset’s dark hair and it’s okay. It’s good, really. They never say “I love you’, but Sunset will call her lover sometimes and isn’t that close enough? It’s close enough when Sunset’s daddy’s company comes out with a line that looks just like the specs Tony had left, so carelessly next to their bed. Relationship’s just aren’t Tony’s thing, really.)

 

After that Tony fucks hookers. And models. And never any girl more than once. She never, ever, fucks men.

 

Obie explains it to her like this: it’s not that she’s a woman. Or that she’s a dyke (the word isn’t in his mouth but it’s in his eyes) even. It’s how she takes those things and, and shoves them in people’s faces. It makes them uncomfortable. Some of these men have been on the board since before you were born, Tony. They just aren’t ready for this kind of change, Tony. Just think about it, okay, Tony?

 

Tony thinks about it.

She brings a Playboy model with her to the next event Stark Industries holds, and gropes her next to the punch.

 

She becomes a parody of herself. She takes the stones the press throw at her and does the only thing she knows: she turns it into a weapon. Her public image becomes armor, and she hones the act until it becomes like a second skin. She’s permanently inebriated. The sex isn’t fun, and afterwards she feels emptier than that first time, and she knows that shouldn’t be the case, but it is. She wakes up before dawn, manic, hands shaking as she makes her way to the lab and works. SOmetimes on contracts. Sometimes on her cars. Sometimes she stares at the glowing screens around her, focussed, and sometimes she just stares.

 

Three days after Jarvis dies, Rhodey calls her. They haven’t talked in seven months, what with him joining the army and Tony being the mess she is. She doesn’t pick up. He calls again the next day. And the next.

Eight days after Jarvis dies, Tony picks up.

The funeral is a private affair, and Rhodey stands beside her, still as a rock. Tony holds onto him so she doesn’t blow over.

Three weeks after jarvis dies, J.A.R.V.I.S is born. He’s only sixteen modified security cameras, two mics and a clunky imitation of a voice she knows so well, but Tony cries anyway, and when the computer program that’s so much more than a goddamn program asks _why_ , the word somehow laden with curiosity and concern, well, she cries harder. And suddenly Tony has someone else to lean on.

Tony pulls herself up again (she doesn’t, not until after alcohol poisoning, Obie’s gentle smile as he explains how she’s going to be taking a vacation, don’t worry Tones, the company will be waiting for you when you’re...better, and rehab’s a bitch and Tony never let’s herself take the easy route, oh no) and she works, sometimes, building WMDs, working on J.A.R.V.I.S. There’s still the sex, and drugs, sometimes, but she finds a balance between living and Living, and walks it. Or runs it, really. She never does anything by halves, after all.

 

Tony goes through Personal Assistants at an astonishing rate. She flirts with all of them, usually half-heartedly. Sometimes they bend over. Sometimes they quit. Virginia Potts threatens her. With pepper spray. She looks mortified after the fact, but Tony laughs until she cries and gives her a bonus. Good thing she turns out to be hyper-competent and dependable and beautiful - but she keeps that to herself. She nicknames her Pepper, just to embarrass her, but somewhere along the line it’s becomes more endearment than anything else.

Pepper cleans up after her with beautiful precision. And one day Pepper will say “ _everybody knows exactly who you are, and how you are with girls,_ ” and Tony will think on all the times Pepper led her _conquests_ to the door with a polite smile. And she doesn’t feel bad, exactly, just a vague kind of regret.

 

She does an interview with OUT, and another with Forbes. She doesn’t read either of them.

 

* * *

 

Tony gets older. She barely shows up at board meetings anymore. Obie acts in her place, just tells her where to sign. Things are okay.

 

Then there’s shrapnel in her heart, and Yinsen’s death on her shoulders.

There is nothing okay about that.

There’s no time for sex, she spends her time working with a passion she hasn’t felt since she was messing with AI in her twenties. She builds another suit of armor, this one literal. Obie betrays her and she fights, she nearly dies, and after everything, the press are calling her iron man, and she laughs for the first time in what feels like years and goddamn she goes with it.

 

She also leaves Pepper on the roof. It’s a good thing relationships are for other people.

 

Life goes on. It’s messy. She’s slowly dying so she gets drunk again. Becomes a spectacle again. She fights with Rhodey - and if that isn’t just wrong on every damn level - and in the aftermath she sits on a rooftop with Pep, and Rhodey and J and she knows she’s lucky to have these people, after everything.

 

She doesn’t kiss Pepper but she doesn’t leave her either. And maybe that’s better.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write lesbian tony lol oops


End file.
